Lyons Flint
by Cris
Summary: Updated. Trinity feels she's failed at the one thing she ever really hoped to get right. And without Neo, she doesn't see much point in trying to right the wrongs of the past.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: Here I am again in your lovely fandom...seems that ideas keep popping into my head and there just isn't time to write them all down. This is a sort-of sequel to "Wedding Night," though it can be read as a stand-alone piece as well. I think._

**Lyons Flint**

Flint rolled over in her sleep and, for the first time in a long while, almost fell off the lip of her third-tier bunk. With a mild curse she shoved her body toward the middle of the thin mattress and yanked at her blankets. Usually she slept quite still, not moving at all, but for some reason she'd tossed and turned the night before. She had pulled at her blankets, forcing them to become untucked during her sleep. Now she shivered and threw them back over her uncovered feet. She couldn't feel her toes and could only wiggle them with great effort.

No longer sleepy, Flint tucked her legs up under her, trying to warm her feet in the hot crevices behind her knees. It wasn't the best way to get warm but it was all she had at the moment. The dim light of morning bled through the inch-thick glass windows. The chicken-wire embedded in the glass painted bar-like patterns in the gray room. 

Flint sat up, gooseflesh prickling her skin and making the silky hairs on her arms stand up straight and stiff. She felt like a dog raising its hackles as she dangled her heels over the edge of her bunk and stretched her arms up above her head. Sitting up like this, she could plant her hands flat against the cement ceiling. 

A door banged open; nobody entered, but Flint saw the rough outline of a thick female hand reach inside and smack the wake-up button. Immediately a high-pitched whine fed through the room's speakers. Bodies leaped up from all the beds, startled from sleep. 

"Bloody thing," a dark voice below Flint said. She flipped over, kneeling on her thin mattress and lowering her head to peer at the bunk below her. 

"'Morning to you, too," she said to the person below her.

"Fuck off, kid."

"Why don't you?" Flint jumped to the cement floor—there was no ladder—and opened the metal cabinet at the foot of the set of bunks. She had a shelf to herself, the top shelf, and now she pulled out her day clothing. It was virtually all she stored there—a pair of thickly insulated pants, a shirt, two pairs of socks, a pair of nearly indestructible boots, an insulated jacket, and a thermal hat. Changes of clothing were passed out once a week, underclothes and sleepwear the same as day clothing. 

She didn't say much as she made her way to the washroom along with the forty-nine other people with whom she shared her living space. It stank of industrial cleaning agents and the strange, biodegradable electric lighting implements that were aboveground standard-issue. In the close, cold surroundings, Flint quickly used the toilet, scrubbed her face in tepid water—the sinks never really ran hot—and rinsed her mouth with the standard-issue decontaminate that kept their teeth from rotting. There were twenty-two sinks and twelve toilets to accommodate fifty people, so Flint always tried to be one of the first into—and not so incidentally out of—the washroom. But there was always enough of the gritty, stinging soap and burning mouthrinse. 

Once back inside the bunkroom, now cleared of most its inhabitants, Flint yanked off her standard-issue sleeping shirt and dressed as quickly as she could, numb fingers working the buttons of her thick work pants and jacket with the comfort of long familiarity. Two men brushed past her as she was tying her shoes; neither tried to touch her. Flint smirked; one of the men sported a beautifully split lower lip. It matched the split knuckle on her left hand—she hadn't been careful enough to avoid his teeth this time. No matter. She would have plenty more time to perfect the technique. 

Boots tied, Flint jammed her thermal hat on her head, pulled the flaps low over her ears, and clomped out of the bunkroom. She walked down a long cement hallway where her breath steamed in the air, nothing except an occasional flickering light fixture to show her that she was headed anywhere at all. She turned left when the tunnel turned, then made a right and pushed open a heavy door. Twelve or so of her fellow workers had already beaten her to breakfast; they were scattered among the long metal tables with their tin bowls of protein compound. Flint collected her own bowl without looking at the person who handed it to her, filled a mug with a lukewarm liquid that definitely _wasn't_ the fabled coffee, and sat at an empty table to eat. 

Before she was halfway through a man came to sit at her table. Flint hunched over her food and scowled, but he didn't see. 

"Break in three days," he grunted into his bowl. 

"Mm." Flint made a noncommittal noise and pretended to be far more interested in her breakfast than she really was. 

"Know you an't any family of your'n. Come home wi' me?"

She shook her head, still staring into her bowl.

"Why not?"

"Why should I?" Flint finally raised her head, knowing she had to reply more forcefully since he hadn't just taken no for an answer. She'd dealt with men like him before. She knew how. She wasn't afraid. Flint let her dark eyes look as bored as possible.

"Where else would you go?" He smirked.

"Anywhere I like." Flint stretched her legs out under the table and let her eating utensil fall against the side of her bowl with a small clank. 

"They shouldn't let girls in a place like this," the man growled, his big dark eyebrows drawing together and his face closing in on itself now that he saw he wouldn't get her to talk.

"That's none of my mind," Flint said, rising and grabbing for her mug and bowl. "I'm no girl." 

"Girl you are—no more than sixteen I'd wager." 

"Wrong." Over her shoulder, Flint tossed the words. "I'm a hundred at least."

*~*~*

The cold was inhospitable and the poison in the very air they breathed slowly worked its way into the bloodstream and sickened them from the inside. Sour wind blew constantly from all directions, and the sun burned any skin left unexposed though it shone through a haze of pollution and clouds. 

Flint worked without thinking. She did what she was told, ate when the bell sounded, showered every night in a solution of oxygenated water and decontaminators, and slept the prescribed six hours in a state of exhaustion far beyond mere somnolence. She spoke little, smiled less, and laughed not at all. Her hair was trimmed every six weeks to keep it short enough to stay under her hat and not soak up toxins from the atmosphere. She scrubbed down with gritty exfoliating scrubs to keep the poisons out of the inner layers of skin. 

And she never thought about doing anything else. 

Flint did not keep a picture of her parents or her brother. She didn't know how her mother fared or if her brother had a sweetheart. She didn't know what he wanted to be, if he had finished the formal education he had been only too glad to accept from the government in Zion, if he ever thought about or even remembered the father that had been with them for such a short while.

Flint didn't. He had died before she was born. 

Today Flint's gang worked with blowtorches, burning away all trace of mangled, deformed plant life they could see. This sent oily fumes into the air, but they weren't to worry about that. Later a different gang would come along and clear what they could out of the atmosphere. 

Flint could turn her hand at just about anything that was required here on the surface. She had delved for minerals, digging to find the precious layers of clean, protected sand that they needed in order to make glass. She had squirmed through tight passageways in the planet's crust, taking samples of the radiation levels of the rock that squeezed in about her, pressing her tighter and tighter as if it wanted to smother her. 

She burned away plants, chased danger pockets in the breathable-but-toxic air, purified water, took samples of just about anything they could ever hope to want samples of, and basically sweated away the two full years she had been working out on the Earth's surface.

*~*~*

"Don't patronize me, Morpheus."

The aging captain wanted to smack his head against the hanging pipes of the ship; arguing with his second-in-command was like pulling teeth. Trying to get her to do something she didn't want to do was worse. He would have promoted her to full captain of her own ship long ago if he was willing to part with her, and she knew it. She would have flatly refused the promotion.

"Trinity, I'm only asking whether you don't agree that it's not healthy for you to continue working like this. It's okay to take a break once in a while."

"I do." She wouldn't flatly show contempt by turning on the welder in her hand while he tried to speak to her, but she would do just about anything else—would and did—to prove that she vehemently did not want to be having this conversation.

"Trinity, you don't sleep more than two or three hours a night. You're always taking over people's nighttime shifts—don't think I don't notice, because I do. You're going to collapse eventually, and neither of us is as young as we once were. Please. Don't do this to yourself. You're killing yourself, and as your captain and your friend I cannot allow it."

She turned her head away, her face a closeted mask. "Just leave me alone, Morpheus."

"You know I can't do that." Morpheus sighed and reached out, clasping her shoulder as he would a brother. "Losing Neo was a blow to us all. We all miss him. Now, I can't pretend to know how you feel but I do know for a fact that you haven't been sleeping well since he died. It's been almost eighteen years, Trinity. I'm not going to tell you that you should move on. But I will tell you that you won't be able to live until you do."

"Maybe I don't want to."

"Or maybe you can't do it by yourself?" Morpheus' face was lined with both sorrow and age. "Ah, Trinity, look at us. A pair of old fighters who can't really retire even though we've both earned it. We don't know how." 

She shrugged off his hand, uncomfortable with his speech, and adjusted a knob on the welder. "Captain, I don't want to talk about it." 

"I know you don't, but you've got to." He looked at her, at the strange pale eyes that were still more like steel than anything else he knew. "But not to me." He took the welder from her grasp. "I've arranged for you to go and see the Oracle. Maybe she can help you." 

"I've already seen the Oracle once," Trinity objected. "Everybody gets one meeting, remember? I've had mine."

"You're a special case." Morpheus pointed toward the corridor that led up through a access hatch and to the living quarters they shared. "Go rest now. You're set to leave on a resupply ship that's heading up to broadcast depth in four hours. I promised that you'd be awake when you went to meet her." 

"Don't make promises for me."

"Then think of it as an order." Morpheus gave her a little nudge with the welder. "Go on. Somebody else can finish here."

As she walked up the ramp and through the access hatch, Trinity rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and wondered just how she'd reached this point. Her very bones ached—she was cold and tired and didn't think that anything could ever lever away the pain that was her constant companion. It was like having Neo gone had ripped away a vital part of her that she could not—and yet was forced to—live without. 

Eighteen years and she still didn't think she'd ever get over this.

She didn't sleep anymore because waking up alone was too painful. Two or three hours a night was the most she could manage, because it felt like napping. Napping she could handle alone, but not whole nights. Morpheus still didn't know how, when the children were still young, she would sit up all night in their room and watch them as they slept. Band didn't even know.

But Flint did.

If Flint thought it was odd that her mother stared at her as she slept, it was just one more thing Flint hated about being born on board the old Nebuchadnezzar and having to live there. If Flint noticed the physical resemblance between her mother and her older brother that she did not share, she said nothing. 

That was the problem with Flint—the principal one, anyway. She never said anything so you could never guess what she was thinking or feeling. Trinity remembered, sinking under the heavy yoke of guilt, how she had for a very brief time hated the child. What if those few days, sunk deep into anguish and guilt over Neo's death, had permanently affected the unborn Flint? What if, even before she was born, she knew that for a time her mother had hated her? 

Trinity couldn't know for sure, and one of the principal reasons for this was Flint herself. She was such an intractable child, all fury and silent, lurking intelligence. She was—and this is what made Trinity afraid—very much what Trinity herself could have become under any other captain besides Morpheus. With any type of wrong handling, the volatile young Trinity could have learned the wrong kind of control and discipline and turned out like Flint. She feared it was her rearing of the child that had forced Flint to become so hard.

Unlike most brother-sister pairings, Band was the sweet one. He was quiet, generally cheerful, and spoke about his feelings in the veiled way that males preferred. He was a well-adjusted young adult, just out of the one institution for formal education left to the human race, and he had a committed relationship with a young freeborn girl he would likely marry someday. He spoke to Trinity and Morpheus often, and during holidays the three of them—the last three living survivors of the old Nebuchadnezzar—would gather in the public areas of Zion to be together and studiously not talk about the past. 

But Flint…Flint had been born full of anger and Trinity hadn't been able to deal with it. She didn't know how to raise a girl; all she knew at the time was that Neo was gone and she didn't want to live without him. Flint was left very much to herself emotionally—Trinity didn't know how to show affection to this child without Neo showing her the way.

Flint was slow to speak but quick to learn. She never learned things in baby steps—she never had a vocabulary of twenty or fifty words. She didn't speak until she was nearly five, and then she suddenly began talking in full, correct sentences. She didn't crawl very long before she was walking and she almost never fell down. She was quick to grow, losing her round baby-softness before she was five and turning into a coltish adolescent by age nine. 

Trinity knew now that she had not done her best raising the child. It was too painful to watch the tiny baby slowly turning into a woman with Neo's eyes. Once she grew into her more or less adult body every move she made was feline grace. She was strong like her father, fast like her mother, and possibly smarter than they both were. Band was intelligent, but utterly normal compared to Flint. He had Trinity's nearly-black hair and blue eyes, but his were not hard and cold like his mother's. He had the innocent sweetness of his father.

Inside, Flint was her mother all over again. Just in a different situation.

Though she didn't want to admit it even to herself, Trinity knew that Flint's decision to run away from the confined life of the Nebuchadnezzar had ripped a hole out of Trinity's heart. Though she found it difficult to relate to the girl, Trinity loved her fiercely. She was her daughter, after all. 


	2. Chapter 2

_I own nothing Matrix-oriented except a big poster I got from work (working at Hollywood Video is fun!) So don't sue. Cuz that's basically all I own. Seriously._

**Lyons Flint**

Sunlight washed down in huge great waves of golden warmth. Flint blinked, then raised her face to the sky, opening her arms to it, closing her eyes against the warm brilliance. It heated her skin, delved deep into the shadows of her scalp, found the tiny secret hollows of her body that even soap and water sometimes could not penetrate. She almost laughed aloud. 

She was not standing, but rather sitting on something round and not entirely soft. She reached down, pulling off a ragged glove, and touched her seat. It was shaggy, hot from the sun, and suddenly it _moved_ under her. She rocked with the jerky movement—one rolling step, then two. Flint craned her head around and opened her eyes, shielding them with a hand against the brightness of the sun. She sat the wrong way around on a shaggy creature. _Pony_, her memory told her. _This is a pony._

But why should she have to nearly force her mind to remember such a thing? Surely, if she were familiar enough with this beast to sit upon its back, she should remember its name with no effort at all. Shouldn't she? 

But perhaps memory is like this, for all people, Flint thought dreamily. She stripped off her remaining glove and dropped it to the ground, wondering idly why she should be wearing such a thing as gloves when the air was so sweet and warm. A bird darted in a low shrub near them; the pony sneezed, but did not start. It lowered its head and began to graze on tall yellow stalks of grass. Flint lay back, stretching out on the pony's wide back, and tucked her arms behind her head. She stared up into the immense blueness of the sky. She could hear the hundreds of tiny living sounds that this meadow made. The word _meadow_ came to her mind just as _pony_ had earlier—as if she had learned the theory behind these words but never seen their substance before. 

_That is scilla_, Flint said to herself as she saw a climbing vine of blue flowers_. And scarlet trillium. Over there a patch of clover in blossom, and the tall grass has almost gone to seed_. Baking in the heat of the sun, the meadow smelled impossibly sweet and hot, like bread baking and sugar caramelizing all at once. A fat bee swerved in its path and hit Flint's jacket-clad arm. Drunk, Flint thought, as it staggered back and buzzed off again, zigzagging to and fro as if in a stupor. 

_Jacket_, Flint said, as if naming the world into being. _To keep out cold._ But what was cold? She could not remember. 

A warm breeze crept through the meadow, bringing with it the smell of trickling water. Flint sat up, suddenly feeling slightly uncomfortable in her heavy clothing. The water reminded her of something…if she could only remember what. She decided that she would very much like to find where the smell of water came from—most likely from a small…a small…

The word would not come. 

__

Water, Flint thought, _and that is enough, for now_. She wondered if the pony would obey her command, should she ask it to move. Cautiously, not wishing to alarm the beast, she sat up and turned around so that a leg dangled down on either side of the pony's round belly and she was clutching a low handful of coarse brown mane. 

The pony raised its head at the first tentative squeeze and chirrup from Flint. It glanced at her thickly through bored eyelashes, then returned to its grazing. 

"I'll go without you, you know," Flint said conversationally. "I just thought you might like the company." 

The pony snorted its opinion of that statement, but when Flint nudged her heels against its sides a second time it took a few halting steps forward. Before it could stop on its own, Flint nudged it forward again. 

"Come on, you," she said. "We're going." 

But where?

Flint started and woke, the smell of hot sugar in her nostrils. She sat up cautiously, remembering the round warmth of the pony underneath her. 

_Pony._ It was the first word, besides her own name, that she had ever written. Band had started on smaller words, words like _me, I, am, _and _no._ By comparison, the word _pony_ was twice as long. But, as her mother had always said, Flint was a trying child, and she would spell _pony_ before she would spell—or acknowledge—_no_. 

But why should she dream of one? 

Flint looked around her, noting the weak gray light filtering through the chicken-wire windows. It was cold again, so very cold, and the scent of sugar was slowly fading away…or maybe simply overpowered by the smell of disinfectant and anti-toxic chemicals. Nothing looked different. Nothing sounded different. The air didn't taste different. And now that she thought about it, how was she to know what sugar—hot or otherwise—smelled like? There was no sugar anymore. Sugar—whether in cane or beet form—was not hardy enough to plant yet. They had the DNA samples waiting in some cavern down below, where samples of the most crucial plant and animal species had been locked away since humans comprehended that they were going to lose the first war against their own machines. 

Some of the hardier plants had been reintroduced to pitifully small areas of detoxified soil. Dandelions grew in profusion, and thistles, though why anyone had taken the time to save such weeds Flint couldn't begin to guess. She didn't question the wisdom of her superiors—out loud, anyway. She'd had enough of questions. Her life here was not a happy one, but it was better than being back with Trinity. 

Trinity. Flint flinched as she thought her mother's name. Her memory of the smell of sugar vanished with the thought, and she forgot about her dream between one heartbeat and the next, as the wake-up alarm sounded and the air filled with sleepy curses. 

*~*~*

Trinity stared at the blank metal wall in her quarters aboard the Interim, the ship that was to take her to broadcast depth so that she could meet with the Oracle. As a celebrated war hero, her quarters were larger than any she had ever seen aboard a ship. She didn't much care. She couldn't sleep, and she refused to walk the corridors of the hovercraft and get in everybody's way. The Interim was too like and yet too unlike the old Nebuchadnezzar, and she had no wish to dredge up painful memories when she didn't have to. 

Because Sentinels, servants of the now-defunct machines, no longer prowled the underground tunnels, hovercraft had no need of weapons. The few people left did not fight amongst each other. There wasn't enough life left on the planet to waste it in pointless fighting. Most of the humans still trapped in the Matrix, especially the old and the very young, had died the instant Neo—it still hurt to even think his name—snapped the machines' control. The Matrix, as it had been, disintegrated. The relatively few who had survived the massive assault on their neurological systems had survived for days in absolute darkness, for they had not awakened. Hastily, Zion had hacked into the ruins of the Matrix system and thrown up a firewall around the wandering minds of their still-plugged fellow humans. Then, their lead minds working night and day, they had formed a thin, sketchy VR world of their own and fed it into the few thousand remaining functioning minds. 

Trinity didn't remember any of this. She knew it as she knew history, as she knew that the man she had loved was the reincarnation of another man, as she knew that once upon a time the world had belonged to the race of man. She had been insensible for a full week after Neo's death. She had vague, fuzzy memories of the toddler Band standing next to her bunk, his index finger hanging from his mouth and his blue eyes very big and solemn. She remembered his hot little hands patting her shoulder and cheek, his high piping voice calling to her through a haze of pain she could not break through. 

__

"Mama? Wake up? Mama?" 

In the end it had been Morpheus, her captain and her friend, who had roused her. He had picked up Band, pushed him into Tank's arms, and firmly closed them out of the cabin. Then he had pulled Trinity up by her arm—she hadn't felt a thing—and dropped her against his chest as he sat next to her. Her usual boneless grace had disintegrated, and she let herself be pulled like a rag doll. 

"Cry, Trinity." 

It had been quiet, whispered into her greasy hair, but Morpheus' words had the air of orders around them. And it was in that moment that she had collapsed, her mind and body both, the throbbing pain surging around her. She cursed, she screamed, she beat at Morpheus with her fists, and he took her onslaught quietly. He didn't shield himself at all, and now Trinity could look back on that moment—the first moment she really remembered after she felt Neo leave her—and see how unfairly she had treated her captain. She had compounded his considerable guilt for letting the most valuable member of their crew get killed. She had screamed until her voice was hoarse that it had been all Morpheus' fault, that he should never have let them go in, that he should have seen it coming, that he should have sent her back, that maybe…just maybe…

She didn't really blame Morpheus; she knew that now. The person she had truly blamed, back then, had been herself. She still did, in a way, but it was a feeling deeper than thought, deeper than rationality, and most of the time she could forget that she even felt it. She knew that she would have died, and Flint with her, if Morpheus had allowed her back in. She also knew that she would not have been able to save the man she loved. The guilt she felt was not in abandoning him—that had been Neo's idea—or her inability to rescue him. It was that she had not died, too. 

And after she'd cried herself near unconscious and beat her fists against Morpheus and the metal wall of her cabin, she'd sat up, wiped her eyes, and asked for her child. 

She told herself that she'd never looked back from that moment on. 

She knew it was a lie. 

She knew Morpheus knew it, too. 

Now, in the whirring depths of the Interim, she stared at the metal ceiling and couldn't think of anything she'd rather have than her old surety. She had been sure, years ago, when Neo's mouth was locked with her own and his hands were hot upon her skin, that they were strong enough, together, to win the war. She hadn't ever let herself think that martyrdom would be expected from the One. She hadn't been ready for that eventuality. 

A discreet knock at her door was followed by the face of a young crewmember. "Broadcast depth, ma'am. May I escort you to the Core?" 

Trinity heaved herself off the bed and nodded. She brushed her white-flecked hair away from her eyes, an unconscious gesture, and followed the boy down the humming corridors to the Core. 

"Ma'am," the ship captain said with a ceremonial half-bow. "If we can be of any service to you as escort…" 

"Just send me in," Trinity said, trying to take the tense edge out of her voice. "I'll be fine." 

"As you wish, ma'am." 

Trinity sank into the unfamiliar contours of the chair he indicated, and pressed her head back into the restraints. She had been in the Zion-controlled VR twice before, helping unplug victims of the Matrix. Because they didn't have to worry about Agents anymore, they brought large numbers of people to stadiums and auditoriums, gave them all the truth at once, and then gave them the Choice. Trinity discovered her distaste for public speaking during this time. 

There was a mighty jerk, as if of something pulling loose inside her head, and Trinity opened her eyes to the human-controlled VR. Even now, years after her last experience in the Matrix, she could feel the difference. Human technology was eons behind that of the machines, and this world proved it. The light was dimmer, colors thinner, and everything had a hazy edge of unreality about it. She almost thought she was in a badly colored computer game. Being here did not alleviate the sometimes-painful ache for the real Matrix, for a world of color and sunlight and warm air.

There was no danger here. 

Trinity had been set down across the street from the Oracle's building. This was not the building she remembered—the Oracle had been relocated into a swank hotel. Trinity wondered idly if this change of location had been more Zion's doing than the Oracle's; from what Trinity remembered of the woman, she didn't seem like one for ostentatious surroundings. 

Trinity shrugged to herself, threw her shoulders back, and marched confidently into the building. 

Inside, the lobby glittered with guilt and crystal. There were big vases of flowers everywhere, and the conflicting smells of different perfumes. Several people lounged in the cream-and-gold furniture, deep sofas and armchairs that in her former life Trinity would have been afraid to sit on. She shook her head slightly and stepped to the front desk. 

"May I help you, ma'am?" the woman behind the desk said. 

"I have an appointment with the Oracle," Trinity said. 

"Very good. Third floor, ma'am." 

"Which room?" 

The woman gave her an ironic look. "She owns the whole floor, ma'am." 

Trinity felt the edge of a headache coming on. 

She took the stairs rather than the elevator, preferring the sweeping curve of the richly-carved stairs to the enclosed feel of the elevator. She had never liked being shut in those things. 

She opened the door on the third floor landing, and was immediately accosted by seven children who came running at her. She slid to the side, holding the door open, and, giggling, they tumbled down the stairs. 

"I see you've learned something since our last talk." 

Trinity closed the door quietly behind her and turned to face the Oracle. 

"Don't mind me," the older woman said. "Oh, but it does my heart good to see you again, child." 

Trinity brushed at her graying hair. "I'm hardly a child, ma'am." 

"You are to me," the Oracle said. "Come, let's not stand here in the hallway." 

She led Trinity into a fancy parlor, where she sank into an overstuffed leather couch. "Sit, child. I'm glad you came to see me." 

"Usually we don't get a second visit," Trinity said cautiously, choosing a hard-backed chair and sitting down warily. "I'd like to know why I seem to be so special." 

"Oh, Trinity. Special isn't the word for it, child. But you've done so much for the resistance, and for Zion too, now that it's the center of the new government. They know you're unhappy. They want to help you." 

_There's nothing to help,_ Trinity said silently. _Can they bring Neo back? Can they tell me where Flint is?_ To the Oracle, she said nothing. 

"Trinity, life didn't die when Neo did." 

"It might as well have," she said, staring at her clenched hands. _Why? Why give me this symbiotic relationship I didn't even want if in the end I was meant to be left alone?_

"Baby, you're more of a martyr than Neo ever was, if you'd really like to know. You see, he served us with his death. You, on the other hand, serve us with your life. He died, but he doesn't have to live with that. You do. Every day." 

"You didn't bring me here to tell me things I already know." Trinity raised her eyes but not her head, regarding the Oracle suspiciously. 

The Oracle smiled. "Why haven't you told Morpheus?" 

Trinity stiffened. She opened her mouth to lie, and shut it again quickly. "None of his business," she said finally. 

"Friends and crewmembers for so long and you say it's none of his business?" The Oracle clucked her tongue. "What about Band, then? Why haven't you told him?" 

"He's young, and at a busy point in his life. I don't want to worry him." 

"And Flint?" 

Long silence. 

"I don't know where she is." 

"You could look. She's not so hard to find as all that, you know." 

Trinity ducked her eyes again. "Look, if she…if I…" She ran a distracted hand through her hair like Neo had so often done once his grew back. "I didn't do my best with Flint. And she doesn't owe me…doesn't owe me anything."

"But what do you owe her? The truth? Trinity, child, what do you owe her, having brought her into this world?"

_Nothing_, Trinity wanted to say. _I don't owe that ungrateful child a goddamned thing_. 

She knew it was a lie.

The Oracle took a deep breath and lit a cigarette. She offered one to Trinity, who declined with a shake of her head. "You're dying," she said conversationally. 

"Yes," Trinity said. "I know."

"You've never given in to anything before. Why now?" 

"I know what you're doing," Trinity said suddenly, as the Oracle breathed in a lungful of smoke. "You're trying to make me talk." 

"In the end, you can avoid everyone but yourself—even me, Trinity. You don't have to talk to me. We can sit here for an hour in silence if you like." 

"It won't make anything easier." 

"No, it won't." The Oracle reached over and touched Trinity's cheek with her knuckle. "Tell me, baby." 

Trinity almost ripped her head away from the Oracle's hand, but stopped herself at the last minute. _I don't even know how to be touched anymore,_ she thought, and the thought was so funny that she almost wept without laughter. 

Two tears dripped from her eyes and Trinity opened her mouth. "I'm old," she said finally. "So old. Not in Matrix-years, but as a resistance fighter I'm ancient. I'm like a legend, because I made it. Because I lived to see gray in my hair." She shook her head. "I look old, but mostly I feel old. I can feel the end—I don't know what they'll call it when I go in for testing. Cancer, maybe—cancer's always a possibility. I told myself I'd never write a fucking cancer story. Looks like I'm going to maybe live one instead." 

"It isn't cancer." 

Trinity laughed mirthlessly. "That's a relief, I guess. At least I won't be as clichéd as that." 

"So you don't really know what it is, then?" 

Trinity eyed her suspiciously. "I thought you knew everything." 

"I know enough—answer me." 

"I do not know what it is." 

"Ah. I wondered." 

Trinity hesitated, then spat out the question she'd been chewing on for several minutes. "Flint…do you know where she is?"

The Oracle smiled. "Yes. Yes, I do." 

"Where is she?" 

"Oh, I can't tell you that." The Oracle's face was full of sorrow. "Ah, Trinity. You think that there was little love lost between you. How can I convince you otherwise? The truth is that she loves you very much, even still. She always knew, you know, that you couldn't love her in the same way you loved Band and Neo. And I think that she's resented you for a very long time. But hated you? Never. She loves you just as much as you love her." 

"I wasn't _meant_ to raise children!" Trinity wailed. "I know I messed up, but this wasn't my idea in the first place. It was Neo's; he was always the one who wanted…" 

"I know," the Oracle said dryly. "But life works in mysterious ways. Even I can't tell you why. Just—find her, child. Find your daughter. She may be feeling just as lost as you. Maybe more." 

Trinity shook her head. "She got away, which is more than I ever did. I can't pull her back into this hellhole again." 

"Who says she is not living in one now?" The Oracle rose, stretched, and placed the butt of her cigarette in an ashtray. "She's hurting, Trinity. She always has been. Now, one of you has to grow up and say you're sorry. Which will it be? You? Or your daughter?"


End file.
